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February 04, 2008

General Hospital: Killing Machine

Thanks to a really awesome Super Bowl Sunday that involved disassembling almost the entirety of my dishwasher and ultimately discovering (and having to remove by hand) an enormous glob of greasy fat of unknown origin and age as the culprit of my filthy "clean" dishes and minor flood, I must apologize that last week's GH Week in Review will get rolled into this one. But wait! There is still an opportunity for you to bitch about what ABC Daytime has done to one of your favorite shows!

In December, in the comments section of the brilliant post Mallory did about Georgie Jones' murder (I was less refined and creative with my outrage) the idea came up to make a list of every character Bob Guza had killed off during his reign of terror tenure. Well, regular reader Chad and his friend Samantha (whom he describes as "curiously resembling Kelly Monaco, both in looks and penchant for drunkenness," therefore furthering my belief that we all need to hang out ASAP) came to the rescue and shared their compilation of every character killed since Guza became sole writer at the start of 1999. With this disclaimer from Chad (and an invitation from me to add to or edit this list in the comments -- I'll update the post with new info):

What we came up with probably isn't reliable, since we relied on our own memory and some soap websites, and who is a core family or a legacy character can be subjective

I give you the truly disturbing list, along with Chad and Samantha's helpful tallies:

Characters From Core Families – 10Characters Who'd Been On The Show For At Least Ten Years - 6Characters Who'd Been On The Show For At Least Twenty Years - 4Characters Who Grew Up On The Show - 3Total - 34 37

And this, of course, doesn't even take into account the scores of dead bodies (played by extras and day players) that end up scattered about after Jason's "heroic" shoot-outs. I bet that would add a couple dozen to this list, at least.

And for the sake of comparison to a show that we don't have a daily
hate-on/disappointment-fest for, Chad and Samantha also made a list of
characters offed from One Life To Live during roughly the same time period:

Characters From Core Families – 6Characters Who'd Been On The Show For At Least Ten Years - 2Characters Who'd Been On The Show For At Least Twenty Years - 1Characters Who Grew Up On The Show - 0Total - 18 20

So fear not, dear readers -- all of our bitching about the excessive
violence on GH and the lack of respect for veteran actors and longtime
characters is not totally baseless! I mean, even if it was I would
totally still keep doing it, because it's super cathartic and fun, but
it is nice to know there's some actual evidence to support our rants,
you know?

Good ones. Part of the problem is that we didn't set down who was a major character and who was a minor one. Margaret should have counted since she was on the show for a fairly lengthy period and had a major impact storywise. Danny McCall is more iffy, although if we counted John Jax we should have counted him.

I'm not sure about Trey, though. I think he was only on for a few weeks.

screwtape,

That's what's really funny about the list. OLTL had two serial killer storylines in that period (three if you count Daniel Colson) and still the show has a lower body count.

"And this doesn't even count the "character assassination" Guza is responsible for over the years -- the death that just keeps on giving." Michaela

I was thinking the same thing. All in the name of mobster love - lovable characters, or strong characters, have to become unlovable characters or wusses.

Wow, all under Guza's watch? That is... pathetic. Thanks for compiling the list. That... is just... wow... amazingly pathetic for a soap. Who needs love in the afternoon when you can have death in the afternoon?

They are only counting the death since Bob Guza took the reins as the sole head writer. BJ died during the Labine era. I shudder to think how tacky and offensive one of the best and most memorable storylines in soap history would have been if Guza wrote it.

I think a couple of those deaths were under McTrashit, but really Guza is trigger happy isn't he?

And, in the OLTL list, wouldn't Al Holden be considered a charcter who grew up on the show - I know they SOARSed him but I did watch the child of Max Holden and Gabrielle Medina, be born and as a kid I watched him get into lots of mischief with Sarah and CJ. And remember being just about as pissed off with them killing Al off as I have been about Emily and Georgie, since it was just so the show could get rid of his father Max because they were too dumb to know how to write for him!!! Yeah, I'm still a little bitter about that - lol! See OLTL has had it's problems too!

Oh I would definitely remove Sage from the "necessary" deaths column. The only other death that irked me as much was Georgie's. Alcazar had such a great relationship with Sage -- she made him human in some respects. I also loved that it wasn't typical "rebellious teen who does the oppositive of whatever her guardian wants." Instead we had a bratty gal to the world who *desperately* wanted to belong and worked so hard to be what Alcazar wanted, while he was removed and hesitant to care about anyone since his brother's death. They had great uncle/niece chemistry. I was so pissed that delicate relationship was butchered. Ugh.

I'll cut OLTL some slack for one death -- Asa Buchanan -- because Phil Carey is in ill health and could no longer do the role. However, the same can't be said of GH. Even though Brad Maule (Tony Jones) also wanted to leave and thought it was a good idea to kill off the character, it's arguable as to whether he left to pursue other interests or because Guza had already effectively "killed" Tony Jones with character assassination and lack of air time. So really, the GH unnecessary death count should add another one.

There is another, larger reason beside the author's disclaimer that the comparison to OLTL is inherently flawed. The entry notes that the GH list is based on this fact: all of the characters mentioned were offed under Bob Guza's supervision. Not so where OLTL is concerned. Of the characters listed, only Margaret, Hugh, Duke, Spencer and Asa were killed during Dena Higley's tenure as head writer. (And even then, it is unclear whether Asa's death was committed under the auspices of Higley or her successor, Ron Carlivati) Every other character listed was killed by some other regime.

Additionally, the GH list includes recurring roles. OLTL's does not. With the possible exception of Georgie Phillips, the characters listed for OLTL were all on contract.